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How to Measure Exhibition Engagement

Posted 29/07/2019
How to Measure Exhibition Engagement

At Expo Stars, we spend a lot of time shouting from the rooftops about how important engagement is. But how do you measure it? 

Capturing leads is vital for some. But what if your objective is building awareness or delivering an exciting experience? Or what if you’re looking to test new strategies and don’t know how to measure their success?

In this article, we team up with Event Analytics to explain how technology can help you measure your exhibition impact through engagement. We also elaborate on which performance stats are needed to do this effectively. 

Who Are Event Analytics?

Event Analytics provide the keys to unlocking exponential eventing success. The company offers tools to help you measure: 

  • on location foot-traffic
  • visitor engagement at multiple points-of-interest
  • visitor dwell-time and attention-time
  • conversion rates and visitor flow

It can offer exhibiting businesses reporting per event, per day and per point-of-interest, empowering them to understand their trade show performance on the deepest of levels. 

Plus, all this information is displayed in one location via sleek and crystal clear visuals. Meaning you can access and easily digest all the data you need in a few clicks.

How Does the Technology Work? 

Event Analytics uses the most current and robust technology to generate game-changing insights for its customers.

It combines WiFi analytics and facial detection technologies to measure event performance within its platform. The collection of this data is 100% non-intrusive for event attendees.

The Magic of WiFi Analytics 

WiFi signals are used to generate analytics by listening for network probes from mobile phones. Event Analytics listens to the probes then counts and measures how long the signal is in range (i.e. in your exhibition booth). No interaction or recording of personally identifiable information occurs during this process.

These measurements produce the following intelligence: 

  • How many people are in the area
  • How long a person was present
  • How close a visitor was to a point-of-interest
  • If a person is within the engaged perimeter, or simply passing afar with a set of rules and presets

The beauty of this technology is how accurate it is (when calibrated well). It’s also very reliable: WiFi analytics sensors come equipped with their own 4G connectivity and integrated battery packs.

Unveiling Face Detection 

Event Analytics uses face detection technology to identify human faces. Through this, it can:

  • Count faces
  • Track eye contact connections
  • Detect if the face is female or male
  • Give an evaluation of the face’s age group 
  • Provide other elements such (e.g. if the face has glasses on or has a beard)
  • Provide a mood evaluation (sad, happy, neutral, angry, etc.)

This data can help exhibiting businesses understand which products or displays attendees are looking at, the duration of their interest and statistical information on delegate demographics. 

It is 100% less invasive than face recognition technology which can identify individuals based on the unique geometry of their face (which goes against GDPR when used for event marketing).

The Awesome Value of Measuring Engagement

Effective face-to-face engagement at a trade show is vital to converting customers. Knowing if you’ve done this successfully or not empowers you to refine your event strategy and boost your ROI.   

The stats you can use to measure engagement are:

  • Customer conversation rates
  • Completion of engagement tools such as demonstrations, quizzes etc
  • Satisfaction scores from feedback forms
  • Email sign-ups
  • Social media follows

But some exhibiting businesses are taking measuring engagement to the next level … 

How Event Analytics Can Supercharge Your Insight 

With the necessary tools to leverage insights from Event Analytics’ data, businesses gain the intelligence needed to make groundbreaking changes to their exhibition strategy. 

For example, using WiFi analytics, you can measure how long an attendee spends at your booth. You could then use face detection technology to understand the emotions the attendee experiences

Combine this data with your customer conversion rates and you can realistically gauge how interested your visitors are in your offering

The next step is relaying the results back to your company to feedback suggestions on how to improve engagement for future events. This strategy could also be used to understand:

  • Consumer trends
  • The quality of your product demonstrations
  • The effectiveness of your lead generators
  • How well-received your stand is

This is just ONE way Event Analytics’s technology can be used to understand your exhibition impact with razor-sharp precision. 

For instance, you could also use specific data gathered to discern if you’ve picked the right exhibition for your business

Give face detection technology the task of mining attendee demographics and you can decipher whether or not those who visited your booth match your ideal customer

Based on the answer, you can make an informed decision on whether the type or location of the exhibition is right for your business. 

Why You Should Invest in A/B Testing 

You might have heard about A/B testing before. A lot of online marketers use it as a way to compare two versions of a single variable (for example, an email with two different CTAs). The results gained help them make smart decisions to boost engagement or customer conversion rates.

So how can exhibiting businesses use A/B testing to measure engagement? There are lots of ways!

You can use it to see how well your booth design is received, for instance. By A/B testing various lighting options, content or colours, it’s possible to learn which design converts the best. 

Leading exhibitors also leverage this measurement strategy to refine their product demos. To illustrate: a business has two product demonstration options. On the first day of the exhibition, they run Demo One. One the second day, Demo Two. Then on day three, the business can run the demo with the highest engagement levels to boost their performance. 

This is just a taste of the phenomenal power of A/B testing. And the best part? 99% of exhibitors have never considered A/B testing as an option to benchmark what they do at trade shows. Which means by jumping on this opportunity to improve your engagement levels you can gain a huge competitive advantage.

No More Badge Scanning

You don’t have to rely on bygone measurement strategies anymore. The technology to drive exhibition performance astronomically is ready and waiting.

Seize this power today. For more details, call us on 0161 834 9478 (UK) or +1 702 608 8362 (USA). 

Bonus: become a master of attendee engagement using our must-read guide


Posted 29/07/2019